Abstract The 12th Gordon Research Conference (GRC) on Antimicrobial Peptides will convene in Barga, Italy from February 24 ? March 1, 2019. This highly successful series of GRCs has been a vehicle for driving new interdisciplinary thinking on innate immunity since its initiation in 1997. It is held every other year and is recognized as the premier and single most important meeting in a scientific field that was recognized in 2011 by a shared Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology. The meeting alternates sites between the US and Europe to facilitate attendance by the large international community of scientists active in this research field. Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are gene-encoded antibiotics found across all domains of life, and accumulating evidence points to a fundamental role for these peptides in innate immunity in a variety of biological settings. The conference will focus on this ever-expanding multidisciplinary field of study. The program is divided into lecture sessions and poster sessions; all participants will be urged to present one or the other of these formats. The oral presentations will include four keynote addresses by internationally renowned speakers, which will serve as an introduction to the field for newcomers, as well as providing a context for key themes that currently propel the field in new directions. Short talks will be selected from key posters, with attention to include senior, junior and student level scientists. We also will include an oral presentation by the recipient of the Young Investigator Award. The themes addressed in the sessions include: `Master Regulators: Interplay Between Antimicrobial Host Defense Peptides and the Microbiome', `Antimicrobial Host Defense Peptides in the Treatment and Diagnosis of Global Infection Challenges', `Exploiting Mechanistic Knowledge to Utilize Immunomodulatory Activities' and `Realizing the Potential of Antimicrobial Host Defense Peptides: From Design to Clinical Use'. Ample time for organized discussion and informal interaction amongst participants has been included. The organizational philosophy is to encourage diverse participation and to positively include junior scientists, minorities, and individuals with physical limitations and be without gender discrimination. An innovative aspect of this meeting is the pre-conference forum for graduate students and post-docs to exchange new data and ideas in a comfortable setting of peers (GRS). As with past meetings in this GRC series, the 2019 conference promises to provide a unique forum for deep scientific exchange on fundamental molecules that mediate immune functions and provide an arena for the discussion of harnessing them into valuable novel pharmaceuticals.